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Choice is key to Lowell's educational renewal

By John Schneider

Updated:
02/12/2013 09:51:04 AM EST

Paul George's recent op-ed about the Lowell Collegiate Charter School ("Charter school should mirror the city's diversity") is filled with the usual monotonous complaints about choice and competition in public education.

Lowell Collegiate Charter School received its charter and will open in the fall of 2013. When opened, it will be the state's third SABIS charter school. Begun in 1886, SABIS is a global leader in the knowledge sector, exactly the kind of organization Gateway cities need to help spark renewal and provide services to students and families.

SABIS has a track record of providing students with an excellent education. The results SABIS has achieved in Springfield are nothing short of amazing. SABIS International has been recognized by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation's best high schools.

For 12 consecutive years, since the school's first graduating class, every one of its graduates has been accepted to college. About two-thirds of SABIS students scored Advanced or Proficient on this year's MCAS English tests at all grades. In math, more than half of SABIS students were advanced or proficient. In Holyoke, the K-8 SABIS Community Charter School, which opened in 2005, outperforms the surrounding school district on MCAS tests, both overall and among low-income students.

Low-income and minority students constitute a majority of students in the SABIS International schools in Holyoke and Springfield, as will be the case in Lowell and Brockton.

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Since 2010, state law has encouraged the expansion of high-performing charter schools like SABIS to the lowest performing districts in Massachusetts as a way to close the achievement gap and to provide low-income and minority families with more school choice.

While it is true that funding follows the student to a charter school, districts get a sizable portion of that money back from the state -- 100 percent back the first year and 25 percent in each of the next five years. Even though the Lowell school system is no longer responsible for educating Lowell Collegiate students, the city will continue to collect state funding for them.

Providing low-income and minority families with the kind of educational opportunity previously available only to the affluent is at the heart of the charter public school movement in Massachusetts. Rather than automatically accepting claims that everything is fine in Lowell's schools, the better approach would be to give the city's parents a choice and let them decide what's best for their children.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Schneider is the director for Gateway Strategic Initiatives for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. He lives in Lowell.

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